Duration of Unemployment among Men in Northern Ireland: Regional Inequality or Denominational Discrimination?

Abstract

Male unemployment in Northern Ireland from 1926 to 1973 is examined by using aggregate time series and individual life-history data. County-specific and sector-specific unemployment rates are derived from various published statistics by using an entropy-maximising procedure. These aggregate data show a systematic relative improvement in male unemployment in the predominantly Protestant eastern counties and a corresponding deterioration in the more Catholic western counties. A model for investigating the factors affecting the duration of unemployment of individuals is presented. It is applied to the lifetime unemployment histories of a sample of men in Northern Ireland who were aged between eighteen and sixty-five during August 1973. With controls for other factors, it was found that the probability of reemployment was generally lower for Catholics than Methodists and members of the Church of Ireland, but it was not markedly lower than for Presbyterians. These differentials are also modified by several other interacting factors.